Glenn Edward McDuffie, the young sailor who can be seen in one of the most iconic photos from the end of World War II, has died in Dallas, according to family members. The WWII vet was 86.

Mr. McDuffie was 18 when he was captured in the famous kiss photo with nurse Edith Shain. She died in 2010 at the age of 91.

Mr. McDuffie spent 50 years in Houston before moving in 2009 to North Texas to live with his daughter, Glenda Bell, his only living offspring, after his health began to decline. Mr. McDuffie collaborated with Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson in 2007 to prove that he was the sailor sharing that lusty kiss with Shain in Times Square on Aug. 14, 1945. The kiss was captured by the famous Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt on V-J Day.

Gibson, who has done numerous reconstructions of crime victims' faces using only a skull, carefully studied the bone structure of all 11 men who had claimed to be the sailor before coming to her conclusion that the sailor was Mr. McDuffie.

Yeah, I get that. But I doubt they were standing in the street throwing their hats in the air and making out with nurses. Folks in London, Nagasaki, and Berlin standing among their ruins would probably be feeling a quiet relief that borders closer to grieving than euphoria. The US was perhaps the only country in the world to come out of WWII better than it went in.

dodint wrote:Yeah, I get that. But I doubt they were standing in the street throwing their hats in the air and making out with nurses. Folks in London, Nagasaki, and Berlin standing among their ruins would probably be feeling a quiet relief that borders closer to grieving than euphoria. The US was perhaps the only country in the world to come out of WWII better than it went in.